Year: 2006

With the release of the Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on drive, I thought people might like to know how it compares feature-wise to the Toshiba A1 HD DVD player. I have owned a Toshiba since it was released, and have used the Xbox drive extensively at work and at home (as a part of the…

On July 4th the tradition is to have fireworks. However, as it is July in Seattle, it doesn’t get nearly dark enough until 10pm. Try keeping young kids awake/entertained until then. On October 31st the tradition is to traipse the streets dressed as someting fun in search of candy. However it is October, so it…

My HD TiVo finally upgraded to 6.3a last night – at long last I get Folders. However, I noticed at the end of the System Info page some new text saying “This product contains Apple Computer Inc’s Bonjour network discovery protocol. Source code for the Bonjour software is available at”…WTF? My TiVo has no network…

I’m sorry but I have to rant about BBC America’s Guide Data that my Tivo uses. My TV enjoyment is determined entirely by how well or otherwise my TiVo works. In my seven years of using TiVo, only once has it not recorded something I wanted. However, in order for it to do its job…

I recently discovered a floppy containing the source to a program I wrote in 1992: X-Debug, a debugger for the Atari ST. Coincidentally I also received an email via this blog from someone asking if I had the source and rights to the Atari version of HiSoft Devpac, which I wrote in the late-80s. I couldn’t…

Please read the Joe Kane article in Issue 3 of the Widescreen Review Newsletter (sign up here). Joe is the industry expert on video playback, and he has some very telling comments to make about what is broken about Blu-Ray: why its picture quality is so poor, and why its audio abilities are so limited….

I am in Refcount Hell right now, trying to fix a new chunk of our codebase for COM refcounting issues. Debugging missing AddRefs consumes most of my time, and I might write about that one day, but yesterday I managed to over-Release an object and of course I crashed. Finding over-Releases is trivial by comparison:…

Notepad is a given. Its on every Windows machine, going back to Win16. When you need to edit something in a hurry, on any machine, then it is the obvious tool of choice. And yet with every Windows release, someone decides to change it. Not in a big way, but for changes sake. To keep…

I have literally just returned from watching this, and am compelled to ask everyone I can to go and see this extraordinary movie. If you care about this planet, or you have children who you would like to have a chance of a decent future, you must see this. And afterwards, act on it. For…